NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

y were, and so on. And it begins to set its own sc
hedule based on your living patterns.
RADICAL CHANGE 4 Energy savings. Let’s face it, $2
50 is a lot to pay for a thermostat. But Nest says
that you’ll recoup that through energy savings in
less than two years.
The mere act of having a correctly programmed ther
mostat is the big one, of course. Why should you w
aste money heating or cooling the downstairs when
you’re in bed upstairs? Or when you’re away at wor
k all day?
But the Nest’s smartphone-based components offer o
ther goodies, like Auto Away. The Nest contains tw
o proximity sensors (near and far), which detect w
hether anybody is actually in a room. If the senso
rs decide that nobody’s home, they let the tempera
ture drop or rise to an outer limit you’ve defined
— say, 65 in winter, 80 in summer — even if that
absence isn’t part of your normal schedule.
This feature is useless, of course, if your thermo
stat can’t see the room — say, if it’s in a closet
or behind an open door. But often I’ll return fro
m a day trip, having forgotten to turn down the he
at, and see Auto Away on the screen. Good ol’ Nest!
Nest says that turning down your thermostat by eve
n a single degree can save you 5 percent in energy
. To that end, it offers a little motivational log
o: a green leaf. It glows brighter as you turn the
ring beyond your standard comfort zone. As a posi
tive-reinforcement technique, it’s a lot more effe
ctive than an exhortation from Jimmy Carter to put
on a sweater.
This all sounds spectacular, of course, and mostly
, it is. But feathering my Nest wasn’t all smooth
sailing.